Stepan was barely three months old when some hunters found him alone in a forest in Russia, weak and without his mother. Svetlana and Yuriy Panteleenko decided to care for him until he recovered. That was 23 years ago.
Today, that cub weighs 136 kilos and stands more than two meters tall. He sits at the table to drink tea, watches television on the sofa, and even helps water the garden plants at their home in Moscow.
He eats around 25 kilos of fish, vegetables, and eggs a day, but his real weakness is condensed milk.
Svetlana says that Stepan has never bitten them: he is sociable and loves to hug. What began as a temporary rescue became an entire life shared with a bear that, for them, stopped being wild a long time ago.
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